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I stumbled across this fairly recent interview with former collegiate elite (and masters comeback) Stephanie Herbst-Lucke by Scott Douglas. In it she provides some interesting perspectives on running in one’s twenties vs. forties.

Herbst-Lucke was a central figure in The Silence of Great Distance, Frank Murphy’s excellent history of the development of women’s distance running in the US in the pre- and post-Title IX era. The book provides a biographical survey of key runners and NCAA teams during that era, placing them into a coherent timeline of how the sport was shaped by Title IX, feminism and the earlier rise in stature of male US distance runners on the world stage. The book also provides a nuanced, compelling treatment of the unique psychological and social pressures experienced by those early female competitors and how they impacted — or, in some cases, ended — their competitive careers.

Herbst-Lucke apparently started showing up at local road races a few years back, where she was occasionally recognized by knowledgeable (and shocked) fellow racers. Despite not having focused on the marathon in her earlier running life, she was among the entrants in Boston earlier this year for the women’s Olympic marathon trials, in which she finished in a respectable 59th place.

I’d say I run with an MP3 player about half the time these days. Typically on longer runs when I’m not doing anything special that I need to pay attention to (like running faster intervals). I usually listen to music, but sometimes for a change I download a comedy album from Rhapsody To Go.

This week’s comedy album was Maria Bamford’sBurning Bridges Tour. And it is funny. So funny that I was occassionally laughing out loud while trying to appear normal and not lose my form. I hope passersby didn’t think I was laughing at them.

Trying to describe someone’s comedy act is…well, it’s impossible, really. So I won’t try. But, for some context, I first became aware of Bamford while watching a show about one of the Comedians of Comedy tours a few years back, which featured another favorite comedian, Patton Oswalt.

When I’m faced with the prospect of having to suffer through a fast run that will take me in the neighborhood of three hours to complete, I look to my MP3 player for distraction. Nay, inspiration! And, since I have to run fast, podcasts and audiobooks don’t cut it. No, I need the loudest, most testosterone-fueled sonic bombast that I can get my hands on.

Week one of my “build” period of basebuilding went off with a bang — and ended with a milestone: I ran just under 97 miles this week, which is the most I’ve run in a week. Ever.

There was a lot of variety this week, with no less than four quality sessions* including an experiment with a relatively unsung method for improving VO2 max (more below). I also did two harder workouts back to back on Tue/Wed, just to see how I’d feel later in the week.

I know this week’s cumulative mileage, combined with some harder workouts (and the back-to-back sessions), was enough to facilitate some adaptation because I had two incidences of the dreaded DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) late in the week, back to back (surprise, surprise). This happened in the early days of hard training for my spring race, but it eventually went away, so I’m not worried about it. Unfortunately, it always seems to strike in the dead of the night, which totally disrupts my sleep cycle. It’s annoying, but I’m not annoyed enough to shift my harder runs to late in the day.

Although I’m much better acclimated to the heat and humidity (and it was bad early in the week), my reaction to it seems very inconsistent. For example, on Tuesday I really struggled with doing intervals (1200m), when the temp was 75 and the humidity 85%. I’d planned to do 4-5 at 4:55-5:10 each, but ended up doing 3, dropping the workout when I had legs of lead midway through the 4th. It was quite uncomfortable running in the heat, and a brisk wind of around 10mph on the backstretch was also a factor.

The combined heat and humidity was even worse on Wednesday (same temp, but 87% humidity), yet I managed to run an 8:32 pace over 15 miles (less than 24 hours after speedwork, no less), with no water stops. I’ve always been better at long running, but I was very surprised by how easy the run was, and even pleasant at times. It was so bad out that I could actually wring sweat out of my shirt when I got home.

On Friday I did an easy run over 10 miles and threw in something I’d like to experiment with: I call them “Billat surges” (maybe other people do too, but if they do I’m not aware of it). What are Billat surges? They are a series of surges of faster running at V02 max, broken up with recoveries of equal time length at 50% of V02 max. They are based on several studies by French researcher (and 1:18 half marathoner) Veronique Billat. Information here and here.

In my case, this worked out to running for 30 seconds at around 6:20 per mile pace, followed by 30 seconds at 9:30 pace. It’s a great idea, but unfortunately my execution was lousy. I attempted to do this along Pipeline Road, a long, unsidewalked stretch of road that runs between Scarsdale and Hartsdale train stations (and the only way to get from the south to the north paved pedestrian path). It was rush hour (which means lots of crazed SUV drivers who can’t be bothered to slow down and move over 12 inches to keep from killing me) plus there was construction going on, so it was pretty chaotic.

Also, I’ve discovered that the Garmin takes just about 30 seconds to figure out what pace you’re running, so it’s very difficult to know if you’re going too slow, too fast or just right. The result was a series of 12 on/offs at anywhere from 5:55 to 6:45 pace for the “on”s. Not exactly on target. I want to incorporate these workouts into fall race training, so I’ll probably end up going to the track and doing them there, where I can put down some sort of markers for distance and just use the watch as stopwatch.

The muscle soreness appeared at 3:00AM on Friday night and then again, like clockwork, at 3:00 AM again last night. So I’ve gotten around 11 hours of sleep between those two nights. And yet, despite that, I felt pretty good this morning. Good enough to do a 20 miler inside on the treadmill with miles 16 through 19 at a pace equivalent to a 3:15 marathon (7:27ish — nothing’s exact on the treadmill).

I started this training cycle two months ago at 3:18 paces and guessed that I could move down to 3:15 at this point. Now I’m thinking I should move down further, since my heart rate for the marathon pace miles was between 81-84%. Pretty low effort. So I’ll start training (at least inside, where it’s not insanely hot) at 3:12-3:13 paces for the next few weeks as I attempt to work my way down to 3:08 training paces for October.

My, how the mind wanders while running 20 miles inside. Over the years, when trapped in a tedious environment, I’ve made up a little mental game of thinking up names for nonexistent rock bands (here are three: Girl in Trouble, Shudder To Think and Gay Baby). I thought up a good one for a band consisting of runners today: Cardiac Creep.

To further fill the three hours of tedium in my little room of torture, I listened to a newish mix of mp3s while watching parts of various movies. If you’ve never combined random music as background to popular movies, it’s time you tried. You could probably skip the next Whitney Biennial because you will hit on something approaching art, since wildly incongruous pairings of musical and cinematic artistic expression can result. Some of the odd (and, I suppose, ironic) pairings this morning included:

“Let The Good Times Roll” (The Cars) playing behind a scene from “Cape Fear” (the remake) in which Robert DeNiro takes a chunk out of poor Ileana Douglas‘ cheek with his bare teeth.

“More Human Than Human” (White Zombie) playing behind a scene of Edward Norton getting the crap beaten out of him in “Fight Club”.

“Highway To Hell” (AC/DC) playing behind a scene of Molly Ringwald sewing what looks like a pink potato sack prom frock in “Pretty In Pink”.

What else is there to say? I’m a strange person.

Coming up in Fall Training Week 9: I hold the pace at 97 miles, but with a little less intensity. I’ll do another attempt at the Billat surges, another set of hill repeats, and a little more marathon pace running. All capped by the first 22 miler in about four months. This is assuming my legs don’t explode in the middle of the night first.

One reason that I so enjoy my long runs and recovery runs is that it gives me a chance to listen to some music with very little distraction. And an MP3 player is a sanity saver when you’re stuck inside on a treadmill running for 3 hours.

I spent my “couch recovery time” yesterday putting together some mixes for these runs. I figure I’ll rotate these until I get tired of them, then make up some new ones in January. And repeat.

The key with these mixes is to keep my legs moving on the Easy/Long runs — and have something uptempo for the 10 very fast “striders” (quick sprints of about a hundred yards) that I need to do during the Easy runs.

And I always, always, always run the Recovery runs too fast. So I need music that would be suitable for a lobotomy. I’ve picked the softest, calmest, slowest stuff I could think of.

An entire album this time: Drastic Fantastic by K.T. Tunstall. I’ve pretty much stopped listening to the radio, since it’s full of people who can’t sing to save their lives. Tunstall is the real deal: a girl with a great set of pipes — and she knows how to use them. She can belt, or hold back, be brassy, be velvety, or get dirty when required.

Tunstall rocks out on “Little Favours,” a deceptively simple song with a minor verse-to-major chorus groove. Good production and sweeping harmonies make this a pure pleasure. Then you’ve got a song like “Hopeless,” which sounds totally different, and has her transforming her voice to fit the song’s retro feel: suddenly she’s Shirley Bassey with a lovely little Dinah Washington trill at the end of her lines. But, wait…where’s that country and western vibe coming from? It all works.

“Someday Soon” is the big single from this album, but frankly, her record company could have found four or five songs to fly out there as singles.

This album is catchy, catchy, catchy. You want to listen to these tunes over again to hear those hooks. And you find yourself humming them hours later…

With so much garbage on the radio — mediocre songs sung badly — Tunstall is a refreshing find. And as a surprise bonus, she’s playing in NYC in November. For a mere $27.50, I’ll be there…

Imagine a world in the not-too-distant future. The members of U2 have all died, but have been cryogenically frozen. A nostalgic, mad Gen Xer scientist brings them back to life. And in the process, he leaves Bono in deep freeze (and who can blame him? He’s an insufferably pious blowhard). As a creative alternative, the scientist instead merges the DNA of Bono with Freddie Mercury to create a new, synthetic love child to serve as front man for the reanimated band, now called Keane.

They go into the studio and they record this song. But radio listeners everywhere ignore it, at their own musical peril, instead transfixed by another recording, “Somewhere Only We Know”. A song which, like aspartame, seems okay at first. But then it makes you go “blech.”

I adore this recording. It makes my hair stand on end. It’s a great “bad relationship” song. I feel like I can run 60 miles an hour when I’m playing it out on a run. The production is fabulous, with a distorted wah wah pedal setting the raw mood, and a bass bottom so big it could empty a pool.